Digipak Research - Ben Howard

This is a page that focuses on our digipak inspriation and ideas and designs, such as it shows you our designs and what we are wanting to achieve for our music video digipak.

To get ideas on digipaks and how they are set out I wanted to look into other artists that fit into the same genre as our artists which is folk/indie, So I decide I would look into an artist that is in the same genre such as Ben Howard who is a really well known artist, he has became huge over the past couple of years and he is a unique and brillant musician.

The image below is showiing the front cover of Ben Howards album. As you can see from the image it is unique and is different to other artists' ablum covers because of the colours used on the cover, They are bright and blue, this fits in with the genre of his music because his songs are very blue, and express love and emotions which could be associated with bright colours or the colour blue. Due to the fact ben howards music is based on stories such as relationships and other subjects that are rather sad and upsetting, the image used could also be portrayed as him trying to get away from all of the commotion stress and pressure that he may be feeling, by swimming down into the sea, where nothing can judge you or give opinions. The image and colours also link with some of the lyrics in songs that feature in the album.

I like the stle of this cover because its just a simple picture, which could have many connections to his album and can link in many ways to his emotions and lyrics. It isn't a digitally remastered image which portrays his image even more, because he isn't a techno type of artist and the image fits in with his image and genre very well. It has an image of a guy swimming down into the abyss of the ocean. This links to our artist due to the fact that they are called the Oceans. This has given us a number of ideas and the thing we could achieve with our digipak ideas. I know I am wanting to get images and photos of the sea and landscape pictures of sunsets which include bright colours which could portray the lyrics of our song, falling in love at the ocean. This means I could link the ablum with the artist, this is a benifit because it will work alot better and people will understand why the album has been designed in that way. 

If you look at the image on the front cover you can almost imagine that the photo was taken in the golden hour because of the light that is piercing through the water. They could have edited the photo to make it look more surreal and they could have added in a golden hour to give it more effectiveness. There seems to be lots of circle specs over the picture more at the top, dispersing as the get towards the bottom of the photo, this was most probably added to give the picture something extra and an extra 'glisten' if you'd like. They could be put there to look like bubbles as its underwater. The light coming through the water creates a brillant effect, it reminds me of the light at the end of a tunel, like I said before the liyrics are down and depressing but end up coming to a positive conclusion; this could link to the fact that when things get bad theirs always a light, there's alwasy going to be someone there, no matter how deep you swim. This maybe the message that Ben is trying to get across to his fans and through his ablum cover.

I then looked at the typography on the front of the album, you can see a simple sans serif font has been used. There is no draw away from the image on the cover, but by using the colour white in the font it stands out from the image by giving it an extra bold look and is a better choice than black, as black would merge in with the picture in a negative way. His name covers the whole breadth of the album cover, standing out and written in bold compared to the album name which is below his name in smaller lettering, of the same font but not bold. 

Magazine Advert

This is just a mock up of what our magazine advert will look like.

Here I used secondary images but I plan on getting a real vinyl record to photograph and then edit with Filters on Photoshop.

The background image here was a landscape picture of a sunset by the beach, I plan on taking a photograph and using Filters to edit the colouring and textured look. I will either do this or I will paint a sunset coloured A4 piece of paper and then scan it in and edit again with the Filters to make it look like below.

I used a Drop Shadow on the band's name Coasts and on their album name and song Oceans. This gives the poster depth and I think it gives it a more professional look and takes it out of that 'bland' look; gives it something different, like Coasts do to the music industry.

It also includes were it can be purchased and different ways it can be purchased; on CD, Vinyl and Digital Download. 

I would also like to add the caption "Wave Of Success" next to the NME review as it links to the song and the band.

Improved Label Logo

I decided to download a font called 'The Low Down' and change the type on the logo as it was a bit too bland. I changed it to white writing with a black Stroke around the outside of it. This looked good but didn't stand out as much as it could.

I then changed it again, to black writing with a white Stroke around the outside of it. I thought this was much clearer than the white text was and it stood out from the bright logo as well.

FINAL LOGO OUTCOME

Existing Music Label Logo Research

Existing Logos

Before creating our own music label logo, we looked at existing logos in order yo understand the way in which they look, and to see other techniques that have been used and which ones were effective and how we could bring these ideas through into our label.

These logos are a lot more simpler, they don't incorporate as many images within the logos, they also don't seem to have focused on the typography much either.

From looking at logos like Spotify and iTunes, we realised that most other music related companies use colourful and vibrant colours to stand out and express music, in a fun and bright way.

These two logos use bright colours and give a bold statement.

We then moved onto looking at the typography side of music logos. They seemed to be bold and stand out but at the same time still managing to embrace the logo. Some included the type incorporating with the logo like the one above. I liked this one because it included a record, and the 'i' was also part of the image which is pretty cool. They also use blocked font for the main part of their name, and then a scruffy looking font for 'records', this works well. The 'beight' is also a lot bigger than 'records' which shows that it is probably more important.

Coasts' Record Label

I decided to create a music label for Coasts as they aren't signed by anyone.

I wanted to include something that represented the shape of a record as we are including records throughout the whole of our project, but I didn't want it to be a plain record.

 I started off by drawing 9 circles and colouring them in a sequenced pattern which I thought went well.

 I thought the basic line that made up the circle was too boring so I went onto the brushes and changed it to a more chalky look. 

 My chosen brush effect.

The circle then immediately looked more querky and not as plain as it looked before.

I took it onto photoshop and selected the bit in green, copy merged it and created a new document which I then pasted the image onto and it looked like this below...

I tried this text but I thought it drew your eye towards the text rather than the actual logo and may have been hard to read when its on the packaging or advert, so I changed the type to a more simple font.

It looked too bland in black and white.

my final logo.

I then added a TradeMark sign at the top right of the logo. The text is still visible and understandable and it doesn't draw your attention away from the logo.

Change of song and Music Video.

We evaluated the work we had done and looked deeply at our idea of a party taking place in our music video, we decided that the video that we were going to make wasn't going to include as many conventions of a music video as we could show, and the genre wasn't as visible as we thought it was at the start of the project. We wouldn't be able to be in control of the lighting at a party, which means it would be a lot harder for us to make the video as clear and effective as we wanted it to be. As well as this if something went wrong or we didn't get all of the footage we needed we wouldn't have been able to recreate the party.


We want to show our full potential and for this reason we decided to change our artist to a Indy group called Coasts. They are an english group of artists who are unsigned and we chose to use their song 'Oceans'. It is an upbeat song about falling in love by the ocean, we also believed that we could create more of a narrative story within this video as the lyrics aren't as repetitive as 'Anticipate' by Skream. 

We will be able to be in control of what time of day we want to film our video, meaning we will be able to include conventions like the golden hour, and we will in all have a more flexible videoing schedule and this will benefit us greatly.

We will now be able to include a lot more conventions.

Coasts - 'Oceans' original music video.

Audience profile

Audience profile (our ideal fan)

Our audience will be mainly teens aged 18 to 25, this is because we don't expect people younger than 18 to be partying. They will be your average college kid, which is stereotyped to be a party animal, with good dress sense and an ambition to PARTY HARD. 

They would appreciate this lifestyle of partying and having fun as that is what they do to have fun and this is why we thought it would work well if we used people aged between this gap as they are the people who are more likely to enjoy the video as they can relate to it.

They may watch TV shows such as MTV Cribs or films like Project X, 21 and Over and American Pie. 

They will wear brands such as:

BAPE

  

Stereotypically they would be wearing hats like snapbacks and jewellery to make them look swag and to build up their rep. They may wear these items to look cool but also may just be into clothing and fashion or may just have a good dress sense.

       Diamond Hat

 BAPE Baseball Jacket                         BBC T-Shirt

Levi jeans